The inspiration came from a quote from Jeff Long's book Year Zero and an intense heartache for my love that just left for college. Well, since pictures of a girlfriend don't make for good RPG themes, and I was really liking how the background was turning out, I decided to recycle and reuse different pictures. I pondered which games had memory as a key element, deciding on Wild Arms, Final Fantasy 7, Lufia, and Final Fantasy 8. Since I had nicer FF8 pictures, and the game had a more provacative storyline where memory was concerned, it was my selection. Squall and his friends had their memories stolen from them. And yet, new memories, filled with love and desire, pervaded Squall as he met Rinoa.
How much does a memory weigh? Can it be measured as the mass of a neuron? The volume of a chemical? The speed of a synapse? Is it an array of electric sparks? A nonexistant, surreal side effect of our sentience? Physically, a memory must be able to be measured in nanograms or fractions of pounds. But how much does a memory truly weigh in the scheme of our consciousness? The memory of a love can lift us, that of a lost friend can bear us down. They can be simultaneously lighter than a strand of hair floating on the breeze and heavier than a ship sinking in the ocean. They are the air beneath our wings, they are the shackles that bind us to the earth. I will always treasure my own memories of my heart that has departed, just as everyone that travels this land will lock away their weights. Whether an ounce or a ton, a memory is priceless.